Anyone want to guess what unemployment will be in November 2010? November 2012? I’m willing to bet $1000 that it won’t be down to 7.0% and 5.5%, respectively, as the Obama economic team said it would be with the stimulus package. In fact, I strongly suspect it won’t even be down to the projected “without the recovery plan” levels of 9.0% and 6.0%.

And the most — the biggest measure of success is whether we stop contracting and shedding jobs, and we start growing again. Now, you know, I don’t have a crystal ball, and as I said, this is an unprecedented crisis. But my hope is that after a difficult year — and this year is going to be a difficult year — that businesses start investing again, they start making decisions that, you know, in fact, there’s money to be made out there; customers — or consumers start feeling that their jobs are stable and safe, and they start making purchases again.

Webster is Principal and Founder at at Bruce F. Webster & Associates LLC. He works with organizations to help them with troubled or failed information technology (IT) projects. He has also worked in several dozen legal cases as a consultant and as a testifying expert, both in the United States and Japan. He can be reached at 720.895.1405 or at bwebster@bfwa.com, or you can follow him on Twitter as @bfwebster.